The Carer

by Deborah Moggach

  And that was the end of their relationship. It died that afternoon, in Crickhowell police station, as the two of them sat in their separate rooms telling an officer exactly how, for four years, they’d methodically cheated on their spouses. Their love vanished, just like that. They said goodbye on the steps, with a quick kiss on the cheek, and never saw each other again.

  The little girl was never found.

  But Stella, the following week, discovered that she was pregnant.

  Ken

  Stella never came to the allotment; she didn’t like mud. On her days off she went window-shopping with her sisters or mooched around Howells department store, fingering handbags and squirting perfumes. Women were mystifying creatures.

  Besides, their body clocks were out of kilter, hers and Ken’s. She worked late and he left early, ships passing in the night. And now she was taking temporary jobs her hours had become irregular. That she was in such demand was no surprise. He’d seen her serving tables at lightning speed, plates balanced on her arm, that flashing smile and Monroe wriggle. Her effect on men gave him an erotic jolt. It could still catch him by surprise that she appeared to love him.

  For Ken had spent their marriage pulled along in her slipstream, her laughter echoing ahead of him. He’d become accustomed to her calling the shots; she was the boss. That he couldn’t give her a child was just another reflection of his inadequacy.

  He tried not to dwell on this. They never spoke about it.

  On his allotment, however, he was a real man. This was his domain, and it was here that he brought life into the world. In his shed the seed potatoes, sitting in their egg boxes, looked almost human, so bald and hopeful. He wanted to plant them with Stella beside him. He wanted to show her off to the other plot-holders, Evan and Dai, Huw and Jock. They had wives who arrived with Thermos flasks and pasties. The men stuffed their produce into their shopping bags; they were respected. Some of the older boys, double-digging their trenches, had even served in the First World War. They had proved themselves to be men – giants among men. On Remembrance Sunday they wore their medals and the crowd saluted.

  It was a modest wish, that Stella would come to his plot and admire his handiwork. Ken pictured himself pouring redcurrants into her open palms. He pictured the envy – she was so bloody gorgeous! It was 1967 and hotpants were all the rage. He dreamed of her sashaying down the cinder path and the men dropping their trowels.

  There was little likelihood of this, however. Stella showed no interest in his vegetable patch. Besides, she was too exhausted when she came home from work. What ages women spent in the bathroom! He should have got used to it by now but Stella seemed to spend longer and longer in there, doing whatever women did. He’d had no sisters with whom to compare her; she was his first love and he was truly an innocent.

  He thought he knew her through and through but nowadays he wasn’t so sure. In recent years she had become moodier and less predictable. Altogether trickier. Things between them were changing and he didn’t know why. Sometimes she was so very loving. Sitting beside him when he drove, she would cup the nape of his neck in her hand and press her lips against his ear, making him swerve.

  ‘I love you ever so much,’ she murmured. ‘You know that, sweetheart, don’t you?’

  This ardour – it was like the early days of their marriage. At other times she was downright irritable. Just recently he’d remarked on the muddy state of their car.

  ‘I told you!’ she’d snapped. ‘I have to park in the middle of a sodding field!’

  ‘What field?’

  ‘At that place in Abergavenny. The hotel I work at!’

  He’d shrunk back, stung.

  Nobody had told him this, about marriage. He’d thought that after the first flush of passion things would settle down. How wrong he was. Thomas, his fellow postie, had just gone through a divorce and said he was never going to start on that again.

  ‘Women are like elephants,’ he said. ‘I like watching ’em, but I don’t want to have one.’

  Maybe it was pre-menstrual tension. Maybe it was maternal longing that was stirring up the hormones. Truly, Ken hadn’t a clue. Lie low, he thought, and keep your mouth shut.

  So he was astonished when, one day, Stella appeared at the allotment gates. He’d recognise that red plastic raincoat anywhere. It was a Sunday in late April, the busiest time of year, and he was sowing broad beans. He straightened up and watched his wife approaching. The wind blew a scattering of blossoms around her hair as she passed under the apple tree.

  ‘Thought you’d like some help,’ she said, unzipping her coat. Underneath she wore jeans and his old grey sweater, speckled with paint. ‘Where do I start?’

  Her cheeks were flushed; there was a glow to her. The scruffy clothes made her beauty all the more alluring. Ken had a strong desire to push her into the shed and tear off her clothes. Instead he said: ‘You could plant some carrots.’ He gave her the packet of seeds. ‘Spread apart, not too close. Otherwise they won’t fatten up.’

  She stayed with him all day. She’d even brought along sandwiches. He didn’t tell her what a pleasure it was because this would make them both awkward. Instead, he gave her instructions and watched her inching along on her knees, sprinkling seeds fastidiously between finger and thumb as if she were sprinkling salt on her dinner. She was doing it too thickly but he didn’t stop her. The sun came out and she sat back on her haunches, pushing her hair off her face and leaving a smear of mud on her cheek.

  How he loved her that day! All of a sudden she was the supportive wife. He had no idea what caused it, but something had changed her.

  Back home this mood continued. She no longer seemed distracted. Quite the opposite, in fact; she seemed to be devoting herself to him and tenderly anticipating his needs. She rose at dawn to make his tea, something she hadn’t done for years. To his astonishment, she even darned his socks. Their rolled-up balls, laid on the bed, brought tears to his eyes.

  And then, at the beginning of May, he learned the reason for this shift in temperature. She told him she was pregnant.

  Kenneth would live for another forty years. As time passed he dwelled more and more on the past, and thought a great deal about this seismic period.

  For it was, indeed, seismic – catastrophic, surely. His wife had been having an affair for four long years and was now carrying another man’s child. She said the man had no idea she was pregnant and that the affair was over. She tried to tell Ken the details but he didn’t want to hear.

  He remembered it so clearly. Stella standing at the kitchen sink, a sponge clutched in her hand.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’

  Through the window, the sunlight caught the back wall of their yard. He noticed an elder shoot pushing its way through a crack in the brickwork. I’d better get rid of that before it pulls the wall apart.

  Odd how he could think this at the very same time as his life unravelled. What was odder, however, was his reaction to her words. Of course he felt betrayed and deeply, deeply hurt. But he didn’t feel angry.

  Maybe he’d always felt so inferior that it was understandable, her falling in love with somebody else. Maybe he was just weak. Maybe the news of her pregnancy blotted it out.

  She sat down heavily on the stool. For a while they didn’t speak. She took his hand.

  ‘I don’t expect you to forgive me, love.’ She stroked his fingers one by one, considering them, her head tilted. ‘I’ll leave if you want me to. You’ve got every right to chuck me out.’

  ‘Don’t go!’ He jerked her head up. ‘That would be daft.’

  They gazed into each other’s eyes. Outside, the ice-cream van started playing. It was teatime and the children would be coming out of school.

  But the two of them were oblivious. It was just him and her, alone in the world, her face tilted up to him.

  ‘Does anyone know about this baby?’

  She shook her head.

  He moved away from h
er and leaned against the fridge. He felt a surge of power. She was totally his. Strange timing, after what he’d just heard, but this was how he felt.

  ‘Don’t tell them.’

  Later they went swimming in the local baths, something they hadn’t done for years. Stella was a powerful swimmer – she’d been the school champion – and matched him stroke for stroke. Afterwards they sat on the edge of the pool, panting. She pulled off her cap and shook her hair free. They sat there in silence, swinging their legs in unison. Ken stole a look at his wife’s belly. Was it his imagination, or was it fatter? In her sleek black swimsuit she was a new creature to him, a seal-wife, a creature of the deep, with a new creature inside her. He still couldn’t comprehend the enormity of it.

  ‘I burnt the crib,’ he said, but she didn’t hear. She was jabbing her finger into her ear, to unblock it.

  They called in sick and took the next day off. They stayed indoors with the curtains closed, and didn’t answer the phone. And all day they talked. Frankly, truthfully; it seemed for the very first time. He never knew he had so many words in him.

  ‘I hear you laughing with your girlfriends,’ he said, ‘and I think: you never laugh like that with me.’

  ‘That’s because they’re women, silly. We have more fun than men.’

  He was Mr Safe and Steady. He didn’t mind, he said, he loved looking after her, but sometimes she took him for granted. He said it hurt him that she never wore the mauve sweater he gave her. He talked about his sense of failure for not giving her a child. Oh, it all came out as he sat there holding her hand. Once or twice, tears filled her eyes when his words hit home. They never mentioned her lover; he seemed strangely irrelevant, now. The outside world, too, seemed very far away. It was just the two of them, opening up to each other for the very first time.

  At lunchtime she fried them eggs, his browned on both sides, the way he liked them, and hers soft, the yolk spilling out. They were very close, that day. It grew chillier and they wrapped themselves in blankets, like a pair of invalids. And still they talked.

  Outside they heard the voices of children in the street. The van played its siren tune. A whole day seemed to have been and gone.

  He went into the kitchen to make them a cup of tea. As he filled the kettle it truly hit him. Maybe it was delayed shock.

  His wife was pregnant.

  What a catastrophe. And yet not a catastrophe at all. A sheer, dizzying joy.

  The realisation made him breathless. It was at this moment, pausing at the tea caddy, that he made up his mind. He carried in the mugs and eased himself down beside her. When he spoke, it was with a new, manly confidence. For the first time, he was in charge.

  ‘We’re going to keep this baby,’ he said, ‘and bring it up as our own.’

  She stiffened beside him, not daring to breathe.

  He put his finger to his lips, sssh, and whispered: ‘Mum’s the word.’

  ‘Mum?’ she said, and suddenly burst out laughing. ‘It’s that all right.’

  So began a whole new period in their marriage. Sometimes Ken thought that their previous life had just been a rehearsal – an affectionate but rudimentary thing based on goodwill, bodily comfort and humdrum daily doings. And something further in the past – pelting each other with snowballs, kicking up leaves, their shared youthful exuberance. Now it had deepened; now that they had both spoken frankly, their life together was truly beginning.

  His own generosity had surprised him. He had taken on another man’s child without a word of recrimination. Stella’s gratitude at his tolerance had shifted things between them. His brazen wife had become meeker and more compliant. More loving. Before, he’d felt somewhat peripheral, the mute partner in their marriage; the way she lit up in company had hurt his feelings. This vanished; he was the centre of her life now, he had her to himself. It was the two of them against the world, bonded together with their huge and thrilling secret.

  For they told nobody the truth. Even Stella’s sisters, with whom she was close. Her family simply celebrated the happy announcement. Ken’s workmates took him to the pub and got him drunk. It was 1967 and the Summer of Love, even in Cardiff. People were stripping off and dancing in the streets; the old certainties were being torn up and thrown to the wind. Ken’s subversive act of rebellion seemed to have infected the country.

  And the wonder was that he soon believed in his own lie. He thought of the true father less and less. The man’s name had scarcely been mentioned; Ken knew nothing about him and didn’t want to know. Just occasionally he was brought up short. Once, for instance, when Stella tactlessly laughed: ‘I hope it has my looks and his brains, not the other way round.’

  But he was steadily laying claim to his future child, discussing names with his wife, buying her vitamins and accompanying her to the ante-natal clinic. The other man was fading away; this was the reality.

  ‘This,’ he said, stroking Stella’s belly.

  The miracle of it had become his miracle too. He was proud of himself, of his own largeness of heart. It had taken him by surprise but now they were settling into their new roles, the two of them. In fact he sometimes felt grateful to this unknown man for bringing them closer.

  During that summer the country sweltered in a heatwave. As he sweated on his rounds, Ken considered the future. An idea was brewing – more than an idea, a profound urge that gathered its own momentum. Back at the depot he looked at his mates. He liked them well enough but if he never saw them again he’d not miss them.

  Stella was working at the Royal Hotel, down by the docks. When she came home she sat slumped on the settee, fanning herself with the gas bill. Ken brought her a Lucozade and sat down beside her.

  ‘I’ve been thinking, love,’ he said. ‘What would you say to moving out of Cardiff? Going somewhere else and making a fresh start, just the two of us?’

  She put down the glass and stared at him. ‘You mad? I’m having a baby in November.’

  ‘The three of us, then.’

  ‘Move away ? But what about my family?’

  I want you to myself. He didn’t say this, of course.

  ‘I’m having a baby; I’ll need them more than ever,’ she said. ‘Anyway I’d miss them, I love them. It’s all right for you, you haven’t got anyone except me.’

  There was a silence. He could hear her breathing heavily. Taking her hand, he said: ‘We wouldn’t be moving to Timbuctoo. You’d still see your family. I just think we should go someplace where nobody knows us. Where nobody knows what’s happened, and there’s no chance they’d find out. I think it would lift a big weight off our minds. It’s going to haunt us otherwise – we’ll always be on our guard. This way we can put it behind us and move on.’ He paused. ‘It’s not as if we’re even Welsh.’

  She burst out laughing. ‘That’s the least of it, sweetheart.’ She put her finger on his chin. ‘You’re a caution, you are.’

  Over the next few days, however, he could see her softening. After all, she was deeply in his debt and in no position to argue. Besides, her favourite sister, Corinne, had already moved to London. Why should she, Stella, stay stuck in a back street in Cardiff, kept awake by the drunken brawling of the new couple who’d just moved in upstairs?

  His wife had always been up for adventure; he’d had plenty of proof of that. By the end of the week he knew he’d won, when she said: ‘So what are we going to do then, stick a pin in the map?’

  It wasn’t quite such a gamble, but close. The brother of a fellow postie was moving out of his flat in Solihull, where he had a full-sized allotment complete with fruit bushes, a pear tree and a large, brand-new shed.

  That decided it. Ken, usually so cautious, such a plodder, had revealed himself to be as reckless as his wife. So the two of them moved to Solihull. He got a job with the Royal Mail and she gave birth to a baby girl. They called her Amanda. It was not his choice, this name, but marriage was a question of give and take, wasn’t it? He’d learned a lot, these past few months.

>   And with her birth he’d joined the world of men. He was a father, and their new life could begin.

  Mandy grew up to be a sturdy, cheerful little girl, the image of her mother. If there was a trace of someone else there, Ken chose to ignore it. Some people even saw a resemblance to himself, surprisingly enough, saying she had his nose. He loved the child with a ferocity that took him by surprise. How protective he felt! It was as if his own skin were flayed, exposed to the terrors and joys of the world on her behalf. The price of love is pain. He’d laid claim to his daughter the moment he forgave his wife and welcomed her into the world. And he’d earned her love by being her father, through the years of sleepless nights and nappy changes, of chicken pox and interminable hours of pushing her on the swings in a freezing playground. Years later, when she was a middle-aged woman, Mandy told James: ‘My dad was always there for me.’ Words that made the old man wince.

  Time passed. Mandy started primary school. Her mother, larger now but perennially ebullient, stayed at home to look after her. And in his shed, his home from home, Kenneth built his daughter a dolls’ house. Four rooms, a staircase, tiny items of furniture. It was Mandy’s own home from home, where she could live another life and make up her own stories. Our little rooms an every where.

  PART THREE

  Phoebe

  ‘I can see what Dad meant, about caravans,’ said Robert, who was now living in one. ‘Every day’s a holiday and you’ve got everything you need. All that stuff we had, the endless, endless stuff in that stonking great house. You buy stuff you don’t need with money you don’t have, and all you’re doing is wrecking the planet and feeding the big corporations, and does it make you happy? Does it hell.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Phoebe. ‘You’re becoming a true Knocktonian.’

  This was not surprising as Robert was now living in her town. His caravan was in an orchard next to the recycling centre, out beyond the bypass. He’d moved into it to consider his options while the house in Wimbledon was being sold. It had been a year now, however, and he seemed quite content. He said he felt as free in his caravan as he’d felt in his shed. Freer, in fact, because his marriage had been lifted off him.